Location: California
Country: USA
Genre: Black/doom metal
Full length: Legatum Mortuorum
Format: CD, LP, cassette, digital
Label: Carbonized Records
Release date: May 15, 2026
Before forming Desiccation in 2022, James and Soell Bratt grew up in relative solitude, living in a Northern California mountain town. Although the band would be officially based in Sacramento and Nevada City, they resided far from urban areas, surrounded by expansive natural landscapes. This environment fostered a singular connection to the music of bands like Emperor and Blut Aus Nord, which reflected their Norwegian surroundings.
An increasing number of bands are crafting their own distinctive visions of the end of the world; Desiccation creates one that is as vivid as it is imposing, visceral and all-consuming. Their 2022 debut “Cold Dead Earth” has been described as enigmatic yet gradually bedimmed. This descent into darker sounds symbolized earth’s deterioration and fall into an abyss of cold obscurity.
The band’s sophomore album “Legatum Mortuorum” explores similar themes through a broader perspective. It begins abruptly, emphasizing rawness and aggression through bass, guitars, and drums in “All Light Is Gone,” but the bass and guitars seem to blur and merge into a single instrument amid the furious percussion and waves of synths. It also becomes apparent that the guitars and bass evoke an equally noticeable breadth and atmosphere, reinforcing the conceptual themes.
Throughout this album the band relies heavily on synthesizers from James and Soell Bratt with Patrick Hills and guest musicians Alex Miletich and Karl Cordtz to craft vast atmospheric layers drawing influence from funeral doom/death metal bands like Evoken for cohesion. The raw, grounded intensity symbolizes the earth itself, while the layered soundscapes depict the aftermath of a bleak global catastrophe with nations fallen and ecosystems in ruin beyond man’s capacity for recovery.
The vocals blend seamlessly into this machinery, with echoes enhancing the vastness of the string and keyboard instruments. Faint backing vocals appear as if traveling across long distances, underscoring how widespread earth’s downfall is, with nowhere in sight to escape the destruction. Along with the synths at the forefront of the chaos, many more are layered into the background. Barely perceptible, they serve a similar purpose to the background vocals, adding strategic moments of texture, sometimes hinting at flickers of transcendence, connection and hope amidst the relentless carnage you’re witnessing.
All these elements craft a vast, cinematic soundscape that evokes a time long after civilization’s collapse. You can envision ruined countries, burning or crumbling structures, and the disintegration of nature; dark clouds obscuring the final sunset over long-dead fields. Yet, amidst the devastation, subtle hints of the last survivors emerge, gathered in scattered locations, hoping to someday restore the Earth and begin anew. However, as many have questioned, does humanity truly learn from its mistakes, or are we doomed to repeat history time and again? –Dave Wolff
Lineup:
Soell Bratt: Vocals
James Bratt: Guitars, vocals, synths
Patrick Hills: Drums, bass, synths, background vocals
Guest musicians:
Alex Miletich: Lead guitar on “Legatum Mortuorum”
Karl Cordtz: Additional vocals on “The Alchemy Of Grief,” “Ashes Unto The Abyss,” and “Lamentations Beyond The Veil,” additional guitar on “Lamentations Beyond The Veil”
Track list:
1. All Light Is Gone
2. Cursed In Cold Silence
3. Legatum Mortuorum
4. The Alchemy Of Grief
5. Ashes Unto The Abyss
6. Lamentations Beyond The Veil
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